Edward Willett

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My preview of the ballet Don Quixote…

...being presented this week by Class Act Performing Arts Studio and Do It With Class Young People's Theatre (and in which, full disclosure, my daughter Alice is playing a chicken), is in today's Regina LeaderPost. An excerpt: Eduardo Ventura, one of the ballet instructors at Class Act and Do It With Class, will dance Basilio. "He's a poor barber in the village," Ventura explains. "Kitri and him have known each other since they were kids, and they love each other, but her father doesn't want any penniless suitor for his daughter. He's planning to marry her with the rich Gamache (Kent Wolkowski). They have to fight for their love." The role of Kitri is being danced by Jacqueline Burtney, a former student who ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 9:48, June 15th, 2009 under Art Columns, Blog, Columns | Comment now »

My preview of the Youth Ballet of Saskatchewan’s year-end performances…

...is in today's Regina LeaderPost. An excerpt: More than 350 dance students from age three on up will take to the stage of the Conexus Arts Centre this weekend as the Youth Ballet Company of Saskatchewan, celebrating its 25th anniversary, presents two year-end performances. "There's a little bit of duplication, but not very much," says artistic director Connie Moker Wernikowski. ### The Youth Ballet's elite pre-professional company will perform Ballet for Life, created by a world-famous choreographer, the late Maurice Bejar, in tribute to the many friends he lost to AIDS. It's set to music by Queen that lead singer Freddy Mercury wrote when he knew he was dying of AIDS. Bejar granted permission to one of his students, Artur Kuraczewski, to re-set the ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 15:42, May 21st, 2009 under Art Columns, Blog | Comment now »

My preview of Fortier Danse Creation’s Cabane

My preview of New Dance Horizon's presentation of Montreal's Fortier Danse Creation's Cabane is in today's LeaderPost. It begins: Cabane, says Paul-Andre Fortier of Montreal's Fortier Danse Creation, is not your typical dance show: instead, it's "somewhere between dance, theatre, performance art, installation and site-specific." Presented by New Dance Horizons tonight at 8 p.m. in the Jacqui Shumiatcher Room of the Conexus Arts Centre and Friday at 8 p.m. in the Regency Ballroom of the Hotel Saskatchewan, Cabane was created and is performed by Fortier in collaboration with author, musician and visual artist Robert Racine. "Everybody in his childhood dreamed of a small house you could play in, to create a world for your own self," Fortier says. With Cabane he hopes ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 22:57, April 23rd, 2009 under Blog | Comment now »

Photo of the Week: The Widow Simone

Here I am in all my glory as the Widow Simone in Class Act Studio's upcoming production of the comic ballet La Fille mal Gardée:Perhaps I should ask that this be used as my photo on book covers from now on...?

Posted by Edward Willett at 18:29, June 26th, 2007 under Blog | Comment now »

My alma mater makes the news…

...albeit it in slightly embarrassing fashion: "Mayhem at Harding: Dancing Breaks Out."Oh, and there's video.

Posted by Edward Willett at 20:27, February 2nd, 2007 under Blog | Comment now »

Photo of the Weekend: Ballerina

My daughter Alice, at rehearsal Saturday morning on stage at the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts (Conexus Arts Centre) in the final rehearsal for her apperance that night with her pre-ballet class from the Conservatory of Performing Arts. They danced the sugarplum fairy dance from The Nutcracker at the Regina Symphony Orchestra's annual Christmas concert.She's five, but squint your eyes and you can begin to imagine what she'll look like as a young woman.Is it still permissible to keep a shotgun loaded with rock salt behind the door to fend off young men attempting to call on your ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 4:52, December 11th, 2006 under Blog | Comment now »

Photo of the Day: Backstage

Specifically, backstage at what is officially known as the Conexus Arts Centre, but most of us around here refuse to call anything other than the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts. (Conexus is a credit union, if you're not from around here.)My darling daughter Alice appeared on stage tonight as one of the five-year-old ballerinas from the Regina Conservatory of Performing Arts, dancing to the music of the sugar plum fairies from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. They stole the show, as five-year-old ballerinas tend to do. We were very proud of Alice, who knew what she was supposed to do very ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 5:58, December 10th, 2006 under Blog | Comment now »

Prairie women remembered in dance

"Modern dance" and "prairie pioneer life" are two phrases that don't get used together very often. This weekend at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, however, they'll merge, under the direction of local dancer and choreographer Tracy Houser.   On the Edge: Prairie Women , presented Saturday, April 1, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 2, at 2 p.m., is an hour-long dance drama, combining modern dance, spoken dialogue, images, and both live and pre-recorded music to tell a collection of brief tales about the life of Saskatchewan women in 1915.On the Edge: Prairie Women was born in 1997, when Tracy took a group of dancers to Kuopio, Finland, for the Dance and the Child ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 17:34, March 29th, 2000 under Art Columns, Blog, Columns | Comment now »